'Evil predator' London martial arts instructor jailed for child sexual abuse as police appeal for further victims

The Metropolitan Police has appealed for potential further victims of a sex offender martial arts instructor to come forward after he was jailed for 25 years.

Anthony Swanson, 75 , of Wren Road, Sidcup, subjected a girl, who was then in her early teens, to repeated sexual abuse in the mid-2000s.

He was found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court of multiple counts of rape, sexual activity with a child and indecent assault. He was jailed on Friday.

A Met investigation was launched after a victim-survivor came forward in February 2022 to report the abuse.

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She detailed meeting the defendant through martial arts lessons that he ran from a church hall in Beckenham.

The classes were run by the organisation Swanson founded in 1995, the Taoist Arts Organisation.

Swanson groomed her, before going on to sexually abuse and rape her on repeated occasions.

This included one incident when he raped her during a residential martial arts trip to Bath, Somerset.

Anthony Swanson was jailed for 25 years Met Police She was also abused in the presence of her mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

The mother pleaded guilty at Woolwich Crown Court on 25 September 2024 to three counts of sexual activity in the presence of a child.

She was sentenced to 16 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years at the same court on Friday, 28 August.

In an impact statement read to the court at Swanson’s sentencing hearing, the victim-survivor said:"When the abuse initially stopped, I locked it away in my mind and tried to forget and ignore what had happened. It was too traumatic.

"I came to realise through therapy that what he did happened, and that will never change. I will always have to live with the horrific acts of abuse he put me through.